Saturday, November 26, 2016

WASHINGTON
— The Obama administration said on Friday that despite Russian attempts
to undermine the presidential election, it has concluded that the
results “accurately reflect the will of the American people.”

The statement came as liberal opponents of Donald J. Trump,
some citing fears of vote hacking, are seeking recounts in three states
— Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — where his margin of victory
was extremely thin.

A drive by Jill Stein,
the Green Party candidate, for recounts in those states had brought in
more than $5 million by midday on Friday, her campaign said, and had
increased its goal to $7 million. She filed for a recount in Wisconsin
on Friday, about an hour before the deadline.

In
its statement, the administration said, “The Kremlin probably expected
that publicity surrounding the disclosures that followed the Russian
government-directed compromises of emails from U.S. persons and
institutions, including from U.S. political organizations, would raise
questions about the integrity of the election process that could have
undermined the legitimacy of the president-elect.”

That
was a reference to the breach of the Democratic National Committee’s
email system, and the leak of emails from figures like John D. Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

“Nevertheless, we stand behind our election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people,” it added.

Supporters
of Mrs. Clinton have enthusiastically backed the notion of challenging
the results in the three states as a last-ditch effort to reverse Mr. Trump’s clear majority
in the Electoral College. They have seized on suggestions by some
computer scientists that the states, which were crucial to Mr. Trump’s
victory, need to manually review paper ballots to ensure the election
was not hacked.

The campaign, uniting around the hashtag #AuditTheVote,
has picked up momentum among grass-roots activists still mourning Mr.
Trump’s victory. But the pleas for recounts have gained no support from
the Clinton campaign, which has concluded that it is highly unlikely to
change the outcome.

In
Michigan, Ms. Stein must wait for a Monday meeting of the state’s Board
of Canvassers to certify the results of the Nov. 8 balloting before
filing for a recount. In Pennsylvania, where paper ballots are used only
in some areas, election officials said that the deadline to petition
for a recount had passed, but that a candidate could challenge the
result in court before a Monday deadline.

The
recount efforts have generated pushback by experts who said it would be
enormously difficult to hack voting machines on a large scale. The
administration, in its statement, confirmed reports from the Department
of Homeland Security and intelligence officials that they did not see
“any increased level of malicious cyberactivity aimed at disrupting our
electoral process on Election Day.”

The
administration said it remained “confident in the overall integrity of
electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out.” It added:
“As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a
cybersecurity perspective.”

Photo

Emails of John D. Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, were leaked after Russian government-directed hacking.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

However,
intelligence officials are still investigating the impact of a broader
Russian “information warfare” campaign, in which fake news about Mrs.
Clinton, and about United States-Russia relations, appeared intended to
influence voters. Many of those false reports originated from RT News
and Sputnik, two state-funded Russian sites.

Those
fake-news reports were widely circulated on social media, independent
studies, including one set for release soon, have shown, sometimes in an
organized fashion by groups that appear to have had common ownership.
Individuals, conservative talk-show hosts and activists recirculated
them, often not knowing, or apparently not caring, about the accuracy of
the reports.

A study published just before the election on warontherocks.com,
written by Andrew Weisburd, Clinton Watts and J. M. Berger, documented
efforts by “trolls” to attack the reputations of those who challenged
Russia’s activities in Syria, and to spread rumors about Mrs. Clinton’s
health. The study said that an effort to track 7,000 social media
accounts over two and a half years indicated that support for Mr. Trump
“isn’t the end of Russia’s social media and hacking campaign in America,
but merely the beginning.”

But
the misinformation effort is far from black-and-white. Many people who
spread false news have no connections to any foreign power, including a
man in Austin, Tex., who posted a Twitter message saying that paid
protesters were being bused to an anti-Trump demonstration there. Though
the report quickly went viral, the buses, it turned out, were there for
a corporate conference.

Other
examples, including one studied by a group called Propaganda or Not and
first cited by The Washington Post, appear to have more concrete
connections to Russia. In late August, stories suggesting that Mrs.
Clinton might have Parkinson’s disease were circulated on trupundit.com,
which often runs pro-Russian material. It clearly twisted an email sent
by one of Mrs. Clinton’s top aides about a drug called Provigil that is
used to treat sleepiness. It has also been prescribed to patients with
sleepiness as a side effect from several different ailments, the email
added, including “Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis.”

That single reference was enough to create a fake story suggesting that Mrs. Clinton was being treated for Parkinson’s.

The
allegation was quickly shot down by several news organizations. It made
little difference: Propaganda or Not, made up of former national
security, intelligence and other professionals, and some workers at
Google and other technology firms, concluded that it was reproduced tens
of thousands of times, sometimes by botnets, and viewed millions of
times.

But
it is not known whether that news was circulated under Russian
government direction, or simply by Russian sympathizers, or Mrs.
Clinton’s opponents.

The
barrage of online efforts to influence the election this year has
prompted broader concerns that similar attempts, directed by the Kremlin
or its surrogates, could now be focused on elections next year in
Germany and France.

The goal, intelligence officials and outside experts
fear, is to undermine the cohesiveness of the Western alliance,
particularly NATO members, by calling into question the validity of
democratic elections.

“We
simply don’t know what the effects of the ‘fake news’ and other
disinformation was,” said Jason Healey, an expert on cyberconflict at
Columbia University. “If they were able to influence in favor of Trump
by one or two percentage points in some places, they will be encouraged
to try again for the French and the Germans.”

The
efforts have also prompted debate inside Facebook and other social
media firms about their responsibility to filter out false news. But
doing so is a complex task, akin to editing a news operation, and it
comes with complex political calculations: Once social media firms begin
editing here to American standards, they will be under pressure from
authoritarian regimes to do the same to their standards.

In
its statement, the administration focused chiefly on the threat of
Russian manipulation of the vote on Election Day, not on the
proliferation of propaganda and fake news.

Ms.
Stein, of the Green Party, acknowledged on Thursday in an interview
with the PBS “NewsHour” that it was unlikely that recounts could change
the results. Still, she said that “this was an election in which we saw
hacking all over the place,” and that “at the same time, we have a
voting system which has been proven to basically be wide open to
hackers.”

Trip Gabriel contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on November 26, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Officials Stand by Vote Despite Fears. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe